What people don't understand is that the main purpose of imprisonment/high jail sentences is not as punishment against the individual but it's supposed to act as a deterrent to the rest of society. Government's logic is "If we make an example out of this one stoners and send him to jail for 2 years, it'll make the other stoners stop smoking". The idea isn't a bad one, they just use other people for it which really pisses me off. It's rare that another person is gonna go on a killing massacre so for this crime the punishment is exactly that, there's no deterrent here. However for the Megaupload guy, his punishment is supposed to serve as a deterrent for the rest of the online-pirating community.

I wish more people saw this comment so they would stop making posts like this and understand the 'justice' system. Although your post is OC there have been many many others extremely similar to it and no one seems to understand the above points I just made

I had to watch and write a summary of last night's "Tagesschau" broadcast. It's a newsprogram and I couldn't figure out what exactly they were talking about--something about a trial and 77 people--and this made me realize what it was. I hadn't thought about this guy for months until now.